Petunia is one of the important floricultural products which have been bred and used from old times. Recently, petunia varieties exhibiting various grass types have been developed. Surfinia series developed jointly by Suntory Ltd. and Keisei Rose Nurseries, Inc. are prostrate petunia growing vigorously and flowering from spring to autumn; they are especially popular among a great number of petunia varieties.
Normally, the color of plant leaves is uniformly green. However, there are some plants in which a part of their leaves has a regular or irregular pattern of such a color as yellow, white, or red. Generally, they are called variegated plants and their beautiful appearances have been highly prized from old times. Variegated plants are generated by various causes, and some are generated by chimerism (periclinal chimerism, sectorial chimerism). In petunia, variegated varieties are also known (e.g. limelight, passion variegate, etc.) but the number of such varieties is rather limited.
If means to efficiently create chimeric petunia can be established, it will become possible to obtain a large quantity of petunia varieties, such as variegated varieties, with high commercial value. Such technology is applicable to plants other than petunia.
Under such technical background, the present invention has been made. It is an object of the invention to provide means to create plants with high commercial value, such as variegated petunia, efficiently.